Planning Board - Regular Meeting

We can we have a presentation since it's information only on this or technically you can but if other people who are going to be voting on it are not here to see the presentation I'm not sure like do it again at the next meeting but

it certainly wouldn't bother me. Okay. Well, we'll go ahead and open the meeting. Good morning to everyone who's um listening or here. We appreciate your presence. Um there is not a quorum this morning, so we can't conduct any business. Um uh but we can um have a discussion if any of the board members here want to have a discussion or uh we're also willing to listen to any recommendations from the staff.

Um we were just going to review the langu language of the proposed draft ordinance changes and then hold the public hearing and vote on it. So, um, we probably need to hold off on that until we have a quorum. Um, unless you guys have any questions about that draft ordinance, I can answer. Does anybody have any questions? Yeah, that's what I thought. This is a pretty straightforward one.

Yeah. While we're waiting on any questions about this one, um the uh Swano a small area plan that will come before us in July.

Yes, the actual draft plan will come before you in July. Um and then it has to go through a in August that draft plan will go out for public review. Um and then it has to go through two more boards or one more board and a briefing and then the commissioners and it of course comes back to you guys for a vote and a recommendation to the uh board of commissioners. Okay.

So last we finished our um engagement phase for policies and actions. We had last I checked, but all the data isn't in and it does not close until 5 today. Um, it is we have 212 so far. Okay, that's not bad, right? You your goal in a public engagement like this is 1% of the population. So that's over 1% of the population.

Oh, great. It's going down a little which we see in the final phases of an engagement like this because people get sick of us being there. Uh but that's how we make sure we get everybody and we try to engage everybody is by having those multiple phases and sort of having you know asking people again and again and again until they get sick of us and they run from us when they see us coming with a survey. But you've got a pretty good track record of getting people. Yeah. Yeah. And the Swanova community has been very very engaged. Which is really a positive thing.

Um and we are working on once we get the E911 ordinance through, we're working on watershed and um and uh manufactured home parks for you next. And then we'll move on to subdivision. Currently in the proposed budget, there's some uh money to um get a consultant to uh work on the stormwater ordinance since that's a very complicated one. Um and we're still watching what the downzoning,

you know, the appeals to the downzoning bill are doing in the general assembly. And that's about it. I will keep drafting ordinances and that downzoning bill affects everything in terms of how things can be zoned, right? Huh. The downzoning ordinance that affects

affects what you can like what changes you can make to your ordinance. The most like sort of the catch that gets us on a lot of the changes we want to make is you can't create nonconformities. So, um, for example, uh, if you require two parking spaces now and you go to requiring three parking spaces, you're going to create nonconformities out in the community the community that have two parking spaces for a certain

development. Um, the same with like buffering and uh, setbacks and those sort of things. So that's where we're sort of running and and like a lot of general assembly statutes, it's not very clear. So everybody's sort of in a wait and see pattern to see get soup first or who who sues first or if it's appealed to see what we can do with it. We have plenty to work on before that.

Well, I'm I'm sure that's true. I I was just because of something I was told the other day. um how how does that affect the fact that 80% of the the counties or relatively 80% of the counties still open zoning and or open use and if that any part of that 80% wanted to be reszoned to something else does that a down does a down zoning now I'm not even remembering what we call it um does that affect um how you can zone that 80%. Yes. Okay.

Um if you propose a zoning and you do not get you have to get the property owner's um permission like permission to reszone. So say a neighborhood a whole neighborhood out in open use wanted to be zoned to R1 because they wanted sort of more protections. Um if one neighbor objected

said or a couple neighbors didn't agree to it then and then there is the creation of nonconformities and the the the nonclarity of that section because open use doesn't have currently have setbacks. So if you say reszone a whole neighborhood from open use to R1, you'd probably create a bunch of nonconformities because they didn't have any required setbacks when they constructed that subdivision. Okay. So that's where the sort of issue lies. Yeah.

And we we haven't done a major update to our zoning ordinance in a very long time. and our original countywide zoning was based on Limestone and Beaverdam. Um, so we have a lot of stuff that needs to be updated, a lot of standards that need to be updated and we really don't want to move forward with those standards until we know what's going on with these down bills. Right. That makes sense. Would the nonconformities have to then conform or do we expect some kind of a grandfather? you can't create nonconformities per that downzoning bill and that's the kid okay

like so if you have say you're an open use property and your house is 5 foot from the property line which is building code and you want to zone to R1 you're going to create a nonconformity in that setback because your setback will be 5 feet and the required setback will be 10 or 20 So therefore, you couldn't even qualify for R1. You couldn't even apply because can that can that group of property owners establish that they don't have nonconformities and then move forward? Yes.

So if they come forward and say every property in this area is in compliance with existing R. So, say they had required setbacks in the subdivision per um for covenants and restrictions and they happen to meet R1, they could come forward and resone that. And again, it's extremely unclear what exactly they meant by non-conformities, which is why we're sort of waiting to see how it plays out either in the courts or the legislature. So, Excuse me. So there's really no sense of when any of this could get

there. We are keeping in touch with our um our lobbyist and at the general assembly and um there are a couple bills up to you know fix that issue. Um I'm not aware of any lawsuits that are going on. Um and again this is sort of like when we discuss you know resilience measures and this one plan is all about your tolerance for risk. There are some communities that are moving forward with changes. Um but uh Bunko County likes to try to not get sued. though. And we have, you know, we have storm water and E911 and subdivision and watershed and

manufactured housing park and telecommunications. Like we have a bunch of ordinances we can work on before we can start with the zoning ordinance. And we might bring you bits and pieces like that might create maybe new zoning districts or new um new types of development or new uses in the zoning ordinance to move some of the comp plan goals forward that we feel like don't trigger that down zoning.

So that's a possibility. Um, but we're going to wait and see before we start changing the landscaping requirements and the um parking requirements and the lighting requirements and all those all those standards in the zoning ordinance or any reasonzonings, you know, county initiated resonings. We're going to wait until we figure out what happens down. Okay. Um, what are we going to be looking at with the manufactured home parks? So, that ordinance was written in 1994. I was still in high school and I am old at this point. That is

and to that we are looking at updating the um updating the uh safety standards for like roads and then resiliency making sure uh new manufactured homes aren't placed in the flood plane. Um, we're looking at landscaping and community amenities to create communities and how we can incentivize um, uh, more permanent manufactured home uh, that are a little more resilient to being bought out and changed to other land uses because that is our only form of Nash or really our only form or uh were our most abundant form of naturally occurring affordable housing.

Right. Right. And that all sounds like improvements actually. Yeah. Very good. Thank you. I got a couple questions on our street naming thing. Okay. I come at this from a firefighter fire driver point of view. So these are kind of emergency response inquiries. How many streets do we have in Bumble County for talking? I would we would have to look that up. Don't know. I have no idea.

So, the way that we calculate that is kind of by a a road. It's it's constantly changing a road itself and I can research that and get that that exact number to you. Um, but I will say a road itself defined by that center line might be counted in multi-sections based on where that other. So I can provide for you a road and I'm happy to get that back to you, but it's not going to actually reflect the real road numbers that we have. I know that we have over 5,000 roadways that have been identified that need to be named to meet 911 standards. And those are just and that's kind of why we are working on this plan right now. So I I have that number. Okay.

But that's not the one you asked for. That's close. That gives us a clue as to what you're dealing with. Let's go. Yeah. Um I I think and go on with the rest of your questions and I'll try to help better answer those and I will get um back to report to the board the that number that we have in Bunkham County.

Okay. The second question I have is when you look at like car tags, people nowadays like to substitute letters for symbols like the at sign for the A or whatever. Does our ordinance prohibit that as far as street signs go? So um for street signs itself I I approve road names. So whenever I started approving road names I no longer allowed for symbols. I'm not approving. Um and built into the ordinance there is something that we didn't take away is is that ability to to re to review. Okay.

Um so that's something that I am personally not allowing like those symbols. Um also like the like commas to show possessives and those because it's the wordiness on some road name signs is difficult to relay in 911 calls and also difficult to post. Yeah, I I agree. Um and then another one is do we allow for non-English names or how do we handle requests for non-English names? So pronouncability, correct,

is difficult whenever you're relaying um during 911 calls. Um we have some that are naturally conforming like that are that were already there, have been there for some time. Um I try very hard when I'm working with people to approve road names to discuss with them um the difficulty to pronounce some things. Um and sometimes you have to be very careful when approving road names and allowing people um who are property owners the the right to choose a road name and also talk to them about so I uh do a a dance where we try to come up and negotiate a road name that is more easily pronounced and I'm saying like some of the road names that we have out there like Well, we might be very familiar with the pronunciation of it, but any visitor, any person new to our community might not be able to pronounce some of those wellestablished road names that we already have.

Yeah, even like Lester Highway can be

Yeah, it's and that debate will will go on far after we're gone from here. Um but yeah, it's it's been because we we and and we want to be really really sympathetic to um those communities who are trying to and have that right to name their property. We want to be sensitive to that, but we also want to so I I we we have some things like we no longer allow a road name with the word mountain in it because we're at a saturation point with it. We know I no long we've got rodendrum spelled a couple different ways out there in the field. So like and there are a lot of dogwoods out there. So there are a lot of bears. So I work very hard to try to find a way to allow a person to use a word or use something but also something that can be approved and can be easily understood with the 911 call center. I really appreciate the relationship that I have with the 911 call center and with our fire marshall and those responders. It

can be really difficult at 3:00 in the morning to hear a name over the radio and and you know kind of ping in on where you're going. It can be really difficult at three o'clock in the morning to go to a structure that's on a common driveway that's servicing more than to actually find that address um back back up in there. And I I think like what we're trying to do here is meet those safety standards um and also protect our ability to do so because nobody wants to change their address. Funk County doesn't want anybody to have to change their address, but we do want 911 to find people um efficiently during an emergency. I uh the last thing I wanted to point out was just an inquiry to uh I used to work for Asheville fire and inside of the city of Asheville we had three Cherry Streets and one afternoon we had a full cardiac arrest on Cherry Street and coming out of the station that's three different directions and without more information it was you know the captain looked at me and said make your best judgment you know uh so my question for you is where uh we have a a really common name like Cherry Street. Do we have the ability to further delineate those by saying like Cherry Street North or Cherry Street South or Cherry Street Central?

So, what I am currently allowed to do, and I understand your concern with duplicate road names, and our ordinance does protect us from not being able to assign a duplicate road name again. Um, I have worked with like Mountain Drive and Canler. Um, and the things that I do is try to um, put a northsouth east suffix or prefix on those road names. I also have the ability to change the numbering and the range. So, in the county, I have had to make those hard decisions before and I have changed the range. This one was like maybe in the one to 999 and I put this new one into the 10,00 so that they were diff so during a 911 call when you gave them their address there would be no confusing it with the other one if you were using your correct numbers. Um, so we did have the ability to do that and we do have the ability to do that and I will say that um, the city of Asheville has a new address and he has been very proactive to kind of work on some of the duplicate road names since he has started his tenure in the city of Asheville. I'm very excited to work with Jackson Marks in the city of Asheville and clear up some of these historic routing issues that we've had.

Well, thank you. Thanks for all the info. No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get long-winded. I'm just very passionate about um updating this ordinance in a way that it's going to protect our citizens. I know that addressing is not necessarily something that somebody thinks about until it matters.

It it's it matters. I know nobody wants to change their address and they get very upset because, you know, I I can't tell you how many times on the phone people have told me, "But I've had this address for 50 years." And I understand that, but we didn't have the 911 communication that we do now 50 years ago. We also didn't have the population that we have now 50 years ago. And we have to do our best to protect everybody. And those duplicate names like I talked about that that Cherry Street incident was very scary because you know we eventually got a additional information and it was like nope we're going the other way now. It's and then we went the other way. Yeah.

And we got additional information and we went a third direction and actually

and I will say 911 stands for enhanced 911. So, what we're trying to do is enhance our ability to get to these places. And um I I really feel like we have a lot of duplicate road names in Bunkham County. And I hope that during my tenure here, we will we're working on some of those problems areas because we like currently we still only have one 911 call center for the whole county. So, you're talking about a problem like just in in the city of Asheville, but how many cherry streets we have, how many hillside streets we have. There's one in Black Mountain, there's one here. Um, the hillside apartments call themselves Hillside even though there isn't a hillside street in that. So there there are a lot of those that we have been working on and I'm really excited to continue to work with the city of Asheville to clear some of those issues up.

Well, thank you for answering those. Appreciate it. Any other questions? We will reschedu the public hearing.